The Pentagon spent millions developing a humongous hydrogen-fueled
drone that, it hoped, could fly at soaring altitudes for a week at a
time. Now the drone is all on its lonesome, because no one wants to buy
it.

Built by drone manufacturer AeroVironment, the Global Observer is a 70-foot-long jumbo drone with a wingspan nearly as long as one of
the Air Force’s B-52 bombers. Powered by liquid-hydrogen fuel cells, it
was billed as a persistent eye-in-the-sky capable of loitering at 65,000
feet for a week a time without spewing carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. The Pentagon also envisioned many missions. The drone’s
380-pound payload of spy cameras and sensors could stare at a diameter
of 600 miles of earth at once, while doubling as a communications relay.
It could patrol the oceans and possibly track hurricanes — the
Department of Homeland Security was interested in it too.

But now no one wants the giant drone. “Currently, no service or
defense agency has advocated for it to be a program,” Pentagon
spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told InsideDefense (subscription only) in April. This was after spending $27.9 million
developing the drone since 2007, which came to an end in December when
the Pentagon closed down its development contract, the trade journal
reports.

When emailed by Danger Room, the Pentagon didn’t elaborate on the
reasons why. “Global Observer was a technology demonstration, not a
program,” spokesperson Maureen Schumann wrote. But the Global Observer
had run into danger before.

The first prototype, the GO-1, was destroyed in a crash during a test
flight — its ninth test — at Edwards Air Force Base in April 2011. (The
cause hasn’t been revealed.) The Pentagon had also ordered a second
prototype called the GO-2 before the first prototype’s crash, but then
renegotiated with the company to buy back the drone before it was
completed. It also had a litany of now-former sponsors: the Army, Air
Force, Coast Guard and U.S. Special Operations Command — and the
Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency